Angular fractals in thermal QFT
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1.
California Institute of Technology
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2.
University of Southern California
Abstract
We show that thermal effective field theory controls the long-distance expansion of the partition function of a d-dimensional QFT, with an insertion of any finite-order spatial isometry. Consequently, the thermal partition function on a sphere displays a fractal-like structure as a function of angular twist, reminiscent of the behavior of a modular form near the real line. As an example application, we find that for CFTs, the effective free energy of even-spin minus odd-spin operators at high temperature is smaller than the usual free energy by a factor of 1/2d. Near certain rational angles, the partition function receives subleading contributions from "Kaluza-Klein vortex defects" in the thermal EFT, which we classify. We illustrate our results with examples in free and holographic theories, and also discuss nonperturbative corrections from worldline instantons.
Copyright and License
© The Authors.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
Article funded by SCOAP3.
Acknowledgement
We thank Arash Ardehali, Luca Delacretaz, Jake McNamara, Hirosi Ooguri, Edgar Shaghoulian, Joaquin Turiaci, and Yifan Wang for helpful discussions. We thank Yifan Wang for very helpful comments on a draft. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, under Award Number DE-SC0011632. In addition, NB and SP are supported in part by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation. DSD, JL, and YX are supported in part by Simons Foundation grant 488657 (Simons Collaboration on the Nonperturbative Bootstrap).
Funding
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, under Award Number DE-SC0011632. In addition, NB and SP are supported in part by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation. DSD, JL, and YX are supported in part by Simons Foundation grant 488657 (Simons Collaboration on the Nonperturbative Bootstrap).
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Additional details
- United States Department of Energy
- DE-SC0011632
- Sherman Fairchild Foundation
- Simons Foundation
- 488657
- SCOAP3
- Accepted
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2024-10-26Accepted
- Available
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2024-11-26Published
- Caltech groups
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics
- Publication Status
- Published